Des Temps

The only blog you’ll ever need.

  • (we like) Soap In Our Eyes

    We’re drafting a GLBT transmedia narrative with the Emmy-winning sudser Peter Brash. So in order to smarten up on soaps, I’ve been reading the writings of our pal Sam Ford.

    While at MIT, Sam’s studies focused on the worlds of soap operas and professional wrestling – two highly sophisticated narrative structures that are all too often looked at askance.

    These two worlds provide an unparalleled on/offline space for fan immersion into narrative. One of the best examples I’ve ever seen is described below, cribbed from his thesis As The World Turns in a Convergence Culture

    The most interesting of these interactive extensions…launched in late March 2007. Brad and Katie, two characters on As The World Turns who host a (within text) show called Oakdale Now, decided to have a contest where viewers would write in explaining why Brad and Katie should come to their home and help them complete their least favorite household chore….

    Brad and Katie then choose one of the entries for a cash prize and would also go to their home to do the chore, with the cameras rolling. The twist, though, is that the contest was actually opened to ATWT viewers, with the winning essay getting a $5,000 cash prize and a visit from Brad and Katie to do the promised chore, with the actors actually coming out to the winning fan’s home in character.

    The show aired them doing the chore as a segment filmed for their Oakdale Now show, making one of the fans—and their home—part of the narrative world. As opposed to the other interactive forms of content, this Oakdale Now contest [actually] invited viewers to become part of the narrative.

    a7eRzOLP1gEcontent gets relevant @1:47

    Fiction intermixing with Game Show, Reality and News Magazine structures. Note that Brad says they got 25,000 entries. Pure Genius.

  • Mimic Drink

    Our pal Sorry I Missed Your Party tipped us to the fact that:

    MillerCoors is discontinuing Sparks due to government concerns that it was too popular with teenagers and its energy and booze combination was dangerous…
    I guess I understand that it’s important to protect our impressionable youth; they are our future, after all. [But] lets be honest – has anyone ever actually enjoyed a Sparks “responsibly”?

    Drinking Sparks created the Fun Dipesque byproduct of an orange tongue. Such markings of use are an advertisers dream. Alas it’s the U21 set who derived the most pleasure from it.

    No surprise that the bev was the brainchild of a marketing firm – McKenzie River. These are the same folks who hired rappers in the way back to shill for St. Ides – one of the first marketing moves into the rugged hip-hop space, presaging 50 and Vitamin Water. Impressionable lad that I was, the Crooked I was my first 40.

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  • The Year of the Elephant

    Happy 09 to our friends and lovers.
    Been off in the nether regions of narnia.
    Now back in our fighting chairs.
    We Will Win.

  • Ring The Alarm

    Today is one of our favorite techgeek events, the ITP Winter Show @ NYU. And I’m wondering when somebody will invent the personalized car alarm. Dear Reader, can you tell me if it exists?

    In an audio landscape where people tune out car alarms, why not use unique sounds you know are yours – with changes and customization as easy as a ring tone? If mobile phones can work as car keys, surely this alarm can be realized.

  • Cool

    Our friend H. Willing Davidson edits fiction at the New Yorker. So for his GF Alison Cool’s birthday, what does he get her? Oh, placed within the text of Roger Angell’s holiday poem. Next to Kiki Smith, and two lines above Snoop Dogg. Brooklyn, we go hard…

  • A Minor Triumph in Signs

    paper-nytimes-cover.jpg

    This year, in the interest of improving my quality of life, I decided to subscribe to the weekend edition of the New York Times. The delivery is split over two days and contains all of the items that are available on the newstand edition of the sunday paper. On saturday the Magazine (my favorite publication in the world) arrives along with ad circulars and a few sections I hardly ever read: real estate, book review, travel. And on sunday the rest of the paper arrives: the front page news, Sunday Business, Sunday Styles, and most importantly, Week In Review. The tentpoles of the sunday reading experience are thus split over two days giving a full weekend of quality reading material. In print. Oh joy.

    But there are complications.

    Because of the way I party sleep in on weekends, I am rarely up before ten in the morning either day, and many (read: most) weekends not until noon. This unfortunate fact has led some asshat in my building to assume that I don’t want my newspaper on the days when I don’t get to it before he does. (Pardon my sexism; I don’t know the asshat, but assume it’s a he). And thus on many occasions I stumble out of bed and downstairs to discover that my newspaper is not waiting for me, but that a cowardly and anti-social act lies in its stead.
    (more…)

  • The Zeitgeist, Paradox, and That Weezy

    Google released it’s Zeitgeist report this week: its most searched terms. Sarah Palin and Obama both made the top ten in the overall global and US lists and were among the top three people searched in the US. Number four in that category? Lil Wayne.

    Both the most popular people and most popular searches were heavy on the pop and politics. More esoteric searches such as the “what is” category produced three of the all-time favorites: what is love (1), life (2), art (10), as well as a few head-scratchers: scientology (6), 3g (9), java (3).

    Separately, in the top 10 most viewed online videos of the year, eight of the ten were label-produced music videos. The other two: Palin’s interview with Katie Couric, and Obama’s speech on race — a near 40 minute tour de force that has clocked in more than 40 million views. (Palin’s own 8 min. tour de force was the third most viewed video with 56m).

    Parsing the web-centric upheaval in our industries has become the anxiety-ridden hobby du jour as the mainstream media and alternatives struggle to come up with working business models while the titans wobble. Yet one cannot deny that we are seeing more content than ever; more outlets, more providers. All of this places a greater burden on the individual to craft patterns for consuming media. The hope is that what one eventually consumes will be better suited to one’s tastes, but I smell a paradox of choice. Of course, I want my MTV (online, thanks) too.

    So, what’s your strategy?

    Me, I’ll waffle between smarty design talk and brooklyn girls:


    —
    the fader stays part of the new music strategy. (song: Charles Hamilton).
    Further reading on our preferences from NYT mag.